Prowse, a Vim plugin for surfing the web as markdown

Prowse, a Vim plugin for surfing the web as markdown

The modern web is bloated and over-glamorous. In an effort to simplify my web browsing, I experimented with TUI browsers such as Lynx and W3M, but they did not feel second-nature.

I spend so much time editing markdown in Vim that it is often more comfortable to read than even minimally rendered HTML. As it happens, this is also my favorite way to read webpages. The workflow is simple:

1. Open a plain HTML file from the web with Netrw (This is just like opening any other file in Vim.)
2. Convert the current buffer to markdown with Pandoc
3. Set the syntax highlighting to markdown

The Vim commands to accomplish this are simple enough to type out manually, but that will get fatiguing quickly when following links repeatedly. I decided to write a plugin called Prowse for the purpose.